RIM punts annual investors meeting until 'later this year'

Red flags a-wavin'

Reeling Research in Motion has raised another red flag, postponing its annual investors' confab until an unspecified date later in the year.

That presentation to investors is normally held at the BlackBerry World get-together, which is scheduled to be held this year from May 1 through 3 in Orlando, Florida. This year, it appears that RIM investors will be denied the glories of Epcot, Blizzard Beach, and Typhoon Lagoon.

"We decided to make BlackBerry World more focused on customers, developers and partners," RIM spokeswoman Tenille Kennedy said on Tuesday, according to Reuters. "We will hold a separate session targeted at the interests of the investment community later this year, once BlackBerry 10 is launched."

Reuters did not report as to whether Kennedy was crossing her fingers behind her back when she gave her reason for the delay.

Although she may very well have the best interests of her customers, developers, and partners at heart, we hardened market-watchers here at The Reg can't help but think that the delays to the BlackBerry 10 OS – née BBX, née QNX – and devices using it might have something to do with the rescheduling.

Just this Monday, RIM said that the several thousand attendees to this year's BlackBerry World would get alpha versions of BlackBerry 10 OS hardware devices – presumably smartphones – so they can begin developing for those handsets, which are scheduled for release later this year, purportedly delayed in anticipation of faster, less power-hungry chippery.

As we noted, those developers will need the head start, seeing as how exisiting BlackBerry apps are Java-based. As our colleague Bill Ray wrote on Monday, "The QNX-based BlackBerry 10 will need applications written in C++, using Qt – or WebWorks for the AJAX crowd – while those still sitting on the fence can use the Android runtime or even resort to a bit of Adobe AIR to get their apps working."

That head start should give those devs enough time to build some whiz-bang apps that RIM's new president and CEO Thorsten Heins can wave in front of investors at the unspecified time and place of that "later this year" meeting. ®